Vieira Sara M C, Carroll David L
Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, 9 JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FA, UK.
J Nanosci Nanotechnol. 2007 Sep;7(9):3318-22. doi: 10.1166/jnn.2007.653.
Purification of arc-discharge grown multiwalled boron nitride nanotubes (BN MWNTs) was possible using a simple solubilization and filtration method. Using the common method of arc-discharge with h-BN/Ni/B packed molybdenum tube and a water cooled copper cathode, results in a mixture of hexagonal boron nitride, metal catalyst and boron nitride nanotubes. We show that a simple purification based on the use of surfactants that provide sufficient solubilization for solution filtering of the other materials results in highly purified BN MWNTs. The purified samples were characterized by transmission electron microscopy and scanning tunneling spectroscopy and microscopy. We observed in the purified BN MWNTs square and triangular tube ends, characteristic for this type of nanotube with no metal observed at the tips. Tunneling spectroscopy measurements showed an averaged band gap of approximately 5 eV with the band gap values independent of tube chirality and diameters.
使用简单的溶解和过滤方法可以对电弧放电生长的多壁氮化硼纳米管（BN MWNTs）进行纯化。采用h-BN/Ni/B填充钼管和水冷铜阴极的常见电弧放电方法，会得到六方氮化硼、金属催化剂和氮化硼纳米管的混合物。我们表明，基于使用能为其他材料的溶液过滤提供足够溶解性的表面活性剂进行简单纯化，可得到高度纯化的BN MWNTs。通过透射电子显微镜、扫描隧道光谱和显微镜对纯化后的样品进行了表征。我们在纯化后的BN MWNTs中观察到方形和三角形的管端，这是这类纳米管的特征，在管端未观察到金属。隧道光谱测量显示平均带隙约为5 eV，带隙值与管的手性和直径无关。
